Assuming there's nothing on the drive that needs saving, you're best (and least time consuming) option is probably to reformat and start over. Use GParted (menu > system > partition drives) for partitioning. Does that help?

No reformatting does not change a thing, unfortunately. But thanks for the suggestion. I have tried a few things from google searches but none have helped so far. I have a feeling that somehow i have deleted the original bit of software that comes with the drive that makes it work...and now it's broken.

Just to expand on Scott(0)'s suggestion.You can try this to see if it helps.

Plug in the USB, Open gparted.Make sure you select the USB stick in drop down list, top right "sdc.?"Then Select the "Device" menu option.Then Select "Create partition table"and apply that. It will warn about deleting everything O.K it.That will in effect completely put the USB stick to a virgin condition.

Then highlight the "Free Space" and create a new partition using all the space.You can either format it EXT4 if only using on Linuxor FAT32 if you want to using across platforms.

I don't know why It only shows up as 14.9Gb and what the yellow region is, but i have noticed similar with other USB sticks.Hi,IIRC the "Yellow" area is reserved it's where it creates it's own in internal file/allocation structure.

It's possible you unfortunately have a dodgy/broken stick.?((There are some dodgy sticks out there that are manufacture defects, but have been relabled))

One last test, use gparted again, remove the partition table.This time create a new partition starting at 2 but with a size of only 1024See if that works, if not, looks like it maybe broken.

If it works repeat, but start at 2 and make it 4096If it works repeat, but start at 2 and make it 8192

Have seen posts like this before and only thing that ended up working was to zero out USB with dd first, then reformat. Might as well give it a shot.

Plug USB in and make sure you know which device name is assigned to it. If sudo blkid doesn't show it, open GParted and find out the name from there. (Then close GParted.) For this example I'll use "/dev/sdb" for name of USB. If that's not correct for you, change it in command below.

Have seen posts like this before and only thing that ended up working was to zero out USB with dd first, then reformat. Might as well give it a shot.

Plug USB in and make sure you know which device name is assigned to it. If sudo blkid doesn't show it, open GParted and find out the name from there. (Then close GParted.) For this example I'll use "/dev/sdb" for name of USB. If that's not correct for you, change it in command below.

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb bs=4k conv=notruncWait until it completes (could take many minutes), then unplug drive.

Plug drive back in, open GParted -- create new "msdos" partition table, then make partition(s) you want on it.

Hopefully that works.

As this was the only suggestion yet untried, I followed it to the letter (almost, it did not let me unless I used sudo first) ...then nothing happened except for as the screenshot shows for almost 1/2 hour (just about the longest i can manage to stare at a screen without anything happening lol) Here is a screen shot:

And Yes I did enter the password and pressed 'enter' ...

The fun started when I replugged in the USB stick - everything froze solid and drastic re-start was necessary. Now i hesitate to re-plug in the evil USB stick (it must be cursed!) and lament the loss of $16 and move forward...with my life. A formal burning at the stake of the bewitched USB is scheduled for early afternoon. RIP

Pulling out any storage media is a no-no when it is zeroing out. Typically a zero out will take anywhere from an hour to several hours. Best to start this before you go to bed, then check it in the morning. But chances are that the drive is now kaput due to pulling it out mid-job. This will be also why your system froze. As gold_finger said, don't throw it out just yet, it would be a terrible waste of the support people have offered up to this point.

Sorry for delay -- had to run test twice. After first run, got some errors and had to force stop of dd process. Realized that I had mistakenly used lowercase "k" in "bs-k". It should have been uppercase "K". Corrected my prior post with that and just ran a second test without errors this time.

My 2GB USB took a little over 8 minutes to zero out. Just from that test, I'd say your 16GB USB will take a little over an hour. Your computer CPU will make a difference too -- it may be slower or faster than mine, so these numbers are just a rough estimate. Just so you have something to go by, the computer I ran this on is running an AMD Phenom II Quad-Core 3.2GHz processor.

My dead USB stick was then able to be reformatted in GParted. (It threw out error messages and couldn't be mounted before.) So, it appears to be working again ... for now at least. So, I'd say give it another shot on yours and just wait until it completes knowing that it will take quite a bit longer than we both initially thought it would.

As Jerry mentioned it would be a pity to waste all the good advice I have received up to now so I will repeat the process and see what happens...will report back. Meanwhile a sincere thank you to all of you who are so willing to offer help - it's one of the main things that makes this distro one of the best...soon to be the best